Los Angeles daily herald., 1887-07-13
THE DRAMA.
Mrs. Langtry i'm the Character of
sPnulinc.,,

l-uul1ncsV
Another full and irst-class audience
greeted Mrs. Langtry last night. The
occasion was the production of Bull
wer's fascinating play of The Lady Of
Lyons. This is standard piece that
is now seldom produced. 1t has been
shelved to give place to the meretri-
cious sensations of the French school,
| and the jejune conceptions OF class
of playwrights who have recently
come to the front in this country, and
who indulge in striking effects, no
matter how impossible or opposed to
nature their situations, climaxes or
sequences may be. The Lady Of Lyons
is a finely written play. Some of its
poetry has become classic. Its scenes
and the plot flow gently and naturally
along. 1t has passages that are strik-
ingly dramatic and situations that are
emotional and soul-stirring. And yet
each character is SO perfectly limned
by the author in the words assigned
to it, that poor, indeed, must be the
actors who fail to interest an audience
in the leading roles. We shall not at
tempt to give detailed criticism of
last nights performance. We shall
confine ourselves to such salient points
in the play as seemed to be conspicu-
Gus. Mrs. Langtry, as we had pre-
dicted, was more at home as Pau
line" than she was as "Lady Ormond"
on Monday night. In the second act
she filed the role with statuesque
coldness--all that the character re-
quires. Whatever little warmth she
might have developed, in the descrip-
ton OF that "home to which could love
fulfill its prayers" was rendered i'm
possible under the inspiration of so
unfelicitous unmelOdious and unpa-
thetic Claude as she had. What
ever Mr.. Coghlan may be in other
lines, he is not an ideal lover. There
is neither music, magnetism, nor the
elisir di dmore in his voice. He be-
trays stage gaucheries in his attitudes
and angularities in his poses. Sub
sequently, when he became soldier,
he showed vim and fire, and carried
himself with martial bearing.
We said that Pauline could hardly be
expected, in the love scene, to strike
fire against Coghlan's ice. She did
what she could, however. She saw in
the skies that "clear lake" which her
lover omitted in his speech. She woke
up to fits of screechy desperation in the
cottage scene, but brought the act to a
close by a very clever bit of back
sommerset fainting over an opportune
table. The reimbursement was a de-
cided success, and permitted the lady
to exemplify a very classical picture,
one that brought back images of Ja-
costa when she beholds the sightless
Edipus. In the last act, where Morier
tests her sincerity, she rose above her.
self and threw flashes of real life into
her rendition. We will do the lady
the justice to say that she overtopped
mediocrity on several occasions,
and this certainly is as much
as we ought to expect of a.
parsonage whose claim to recognition
is not as an artist, but as woman OF
fine figure, of graceful features, and
of exceptional celebrity. She knows
nothing of elocution, OF tones, of ac-
cents of modulations or of delicate
pauses or infections. She reads by
jerks-raises her organ at the wrong
time and let's it drop when she should
accentuate. Of course these little nice
ties are not expected from one who is
a mere accident in the profession. But
whilst we are willing to consider Mrs.
Langtry as coming well up to a mark
we should expect her to reach, that
does not excuse the fact that she
should surround herself with COM
pany that has but one redeeming
feature. Mr.. II. A. Weaver, as Col.
Damas, played his role well. He is,
to our mind, the only actor
in the company. The rest are
make-ups. Leave out Mrs. Langtry
as celebrity, and substitute, if it were
possible to find one, a lady who could
play Pauline as indifferently as she
plays it, and, with the cast of last
night, it would be impossible to find a
cultured audience anywhere that
could be induced to sit out two acts of
the piece. The Lady of Lyons almost
plays itself, if only tolerably cast.
For any company to play it indiffer-
emily is to reach very low round OF
efficiency in the dramatic ladder.
She !Stoops to Conquer will be given
tonight.